First Raavi Sastry award to Rama Teertha

Raavi Sastry Literary Trust is conferring the first Raavi Sastry Award to Rama Teertha, a bi-lingual poet, translator, literary critic, researcher and a noted orator, on July 30. The award will be an annual event carrying Rs 10,000 cash, plaque and a citation on July 30, every year.

Raavi Sastry, known as commoners’ colossus, produced thousands of pages of fiction highlighting the difficult conditions of life, and of the downtrodden. He was a writer beyond comparison in employing similes in his prose, which heckle, boo, jeer, ridicule, protest against the hardened ways of the establishment and its various institutions.

Rama Teertha, in a span of 40 years of literary pursuit since 1977, has translated international writers into Telugu, and from Telugu, he made extensive translations in the Sahitya Akademi journals like ‘Indian Literature’ and ‘Dakshina’ – the south Indian languages digest brought out by the Akademi.

He translated Tagore’s ‘Post Office’, Kazi Nazrul Islam’s ‘Bidrohi’ from Bengali, and is the first to translate ‘The Wasteland’ of TS Eliot into Telugu. His recent translation of Eliot’s other poems like the ‘Love song of Alfred J Prufrock’, and ‘The Hollow Men’ are well received. Apart from his comparative studies, he brought into Telugu “Zone” the landmark French poem of Guillaume Apollinaire.

He also translated Guatemalan poet Otto Rene Castillo, Syrian Poet Nizar Qabbani, and short poems of Sri Aurobindo. Projects he helmed like Sri Sri’s Mahaprasthanam’s translation into Urdu and English, served as a window to Telugu literature.

The other translations works include the poetic works of K Siva Reddy, Addepalli Ramamohana Rao, stories of Gurazada, Chaso, LR Swami, AN Jagannatha Sarma, Peddibhotla Subbaramayya, Varala Krishnamurty, Ketu Visvanatha Reddy and Datla Devadanam Raju among others.

Critical examination of works of Velcheru Narayana Rao on ‘Kanyasulkam’; Chaso; Dr UA Narasimhamurty and Volga, prove his mettle when it comes to the matters of making a different view point.

Rama is the first person to abridge ‘Kanyasulkam’ into two-and-a-half hour length, which received a favourable introduction from the great theatre exponent Dr Chatla Sriramulu. He also wrote a small play ‘Jenda pai Gurajada’, a dramatic sequel paying tribute to the sagacity of the original playwright – Gurajada.

He experimented with the ‘Mahaprasthanam’, and oversaw the development of power point by Garimella Nagesvara Rao, a one-hour stage presentation of the book, and is associated with the theatrical presentation of the works of Sri Sri by Bhallamudi Ramamurthi.

A poet of unique record he went on to become the first poet in the country to release a long poem ‘Nirbhaya Jyothi’, on the Nirbhaya issue. He celebrated thecentenary of ‘Kanyasulkam’ in 2010; he published a poetic tribute to the drama, a first of its kind in thousand years of Telugu literature. He also adapted Gurajada’s first story ‘Diddubatu’ as a radio play.

Presently a columnist, contributing poet, essayist, with a social perspective, Rama Teertha has been chosen by the Raavi Sastry Literary Trust for conferring the Raavi Sastry Award-2016, in view of his quality and commitment to the cause of literature.

By: Jagaddhatri